The technique by which those at remote sites have a dialogue with each other while watching images has already been used for applications such as a teleconference, watching of a family and so forth. As a matter of course, a communication system introduced in order to realize such the remote dialogue is desired to be easily handled. Specifically, in cases where system users are elderly people and children, there is a risk that the dialogue using the communication system is unable to be appropriately utilized when complicated terminal operations are required for dialogue thereof.
The above-described problem is possible to be solved via application of the technique according to, for example, JP 2012-178621 A. The technique disclosed in JP 2012-178621 A relates to a video telephone apparatus. To be more specific, the video telephone apparatus is a video telephone apparatus for transmitting speech input from a microphone and images photographed by a camera to a speech opposite party with a communication control section. And, the feature of this apparatus is that, it comprises a human body detecting section that detects existence of users, and when the human body detecting section detects change in presence or absence of existence of users, a phone call mode in which speech and images are transmitted to a speech opposite party and a holding mode in which the speech and the images are not transmitted to the speech opposite party are switched for controlling.
According to the configuration as described above, automatic switching in response to existence or non-existence of users is performed, and thus special operations are not required for telephone conversation, thereby enabling to easily perform speech communication.
However, in the case of a configuration of switching of the phone call mode/the holding mode in response to detection results with the human body detecting section, even though a user, for example, has not been willing to perform speech communication, a phone call mode will be automatically performed when detecting existence of the user. The occurrence of such a malfunction results in images and speech of users which are to be transmitted against his or her will, leading to possibility of raising the following problems such as invasions of privacy, leakage of secret and so forth.